Letters I've Written, Never Meaning to Send

So, having been taken to task by this nice Latvian lady, I feel the need to respond. I'll satisfy myself with responding to my blog, though. I don't feel like quite such a crank doing that. Thanks to the Moody Blues for such a great line to use for a post title.

     I'd like to thank Ms. Voutyras for her gracious response to my letter. She is correct in noting my limited knowledge of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and I appreciate the information she shared on her home country. Regarding my lack of concern for these nations though, my letter did state, "the countries of Eastern Europe have my sympathy if they are truly in danger of being annexed by their neighbor."
     I'll reiterate my regard for their welfare and also my resistance to the idea of NATO bases being installed in these countries to serve as "tripwires." The main purpose of my letter was to point out my opposition to the neoconservative approach to foreign policy espoused by pundits such as Charles Krauthammer. I don't find much that is conservative in their methods. They seem closer to the supposed liberalism of the "best and brightest" in the Kennedy Administration who involved us in Vietnam for a decade. 
     That, in my opinion, did not do the people of Vietnam any good. Neither did the Iraq invasion instigated by neoconservatives leave Iraqis better off. Both were misuses of our nation's military and financial resources. These misadventures give me reason to doubt that adopting the ideas of the right wing pundit class would benefit the folks in the Baltic countries. 

In my initial letter, I mentioned the loss of tens of millions by the Russians fighting the Nazis in WWII and how the thought of the U.S. going to war against them, on their own turf (not Red Dawn), would probably be a bad idea. There's a book I read some years ago by Antony Beevor about the siege at Stalingrad. Hopefully anyone considering this idea would take a look at the determination shown by those Russians in defending that city and think twice. Thrice, if necessary.